Jim Jarmusch loses his filmmaking smirk

Jim Jarmusch loses his filmmaking smirk

Jim Jarmusch loses his filmmaking smirk in The Buffalo News

"Paterson" is a likable but very minor film about what is, for some, a major subject. The major subject is American poetry and the love it inspires -especially love for the great poetry of William Carlos Williams, whose influence suffuses the whole film.

Paterson is the name of the bus driver at the center of the film. He's played by Adam Driver, an actor whose shaggy benevolence helps the film to be as likable as it is. Golshifteh Farahani plays his wife Laura.

Paterson also is the name of the New Jersey city where the film takes place. And it was the name of the longest poem of William Carlos Williams' life, whose composition took 12 years, from 1946 to 1958. Williams was one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century, a bulwark against the academicism of Pound and Eliot and a huge influence Marlboro Red Cigarettes for many, including Robert Creeley and other poets (for instance, Allen Ginsberg who did, in fact, come from Paterson).